Topping From Below (35 page)
At the club, the pool is crowded and I have to share lanes with another person. Standing at the shallow end of the pool, wearing a black Speedo, a bathing cap, and goggles around my neck, I watch the swimmers for a few minutes so I can determine who is the fastest. If I have to share a lane, I want to make sure it’s with someone who won’t slow me down. Two women are using kickboards, splashing water everywhere as they leisurely travel down their lane, talking back and forth. In three other lanes, all the swimmers are going much too slow, and there are too many people in the far lane.
I walk over to the second lane on the right where a young man in his early twenties, with dark hair and a sunburned back, is swimming laps. When he’s near the far end of the pool, I put on my goggles. When he starts back, I dive in. I’m under the water only for seconds, and it’s like diving into a different, calmer world, an inner fluid space, womblike, without gravity or life’s problems to pull me down. But when I break the surface, the tranquillity breaks also. M. resurfaces in my mind. Arm over arm, my strokes propel me forward, and the other swimmer and I pass in the middle of the pool. I increase my speed, and on the next lap I gain an arm’s length distance on my lane partner. But in the lap after that we are even again, passing in the middle. We remain even for the next ten laps. Whenever I increase my speed, so does he. I imagine that he is M., my nemesis, and that we’re in a race where only one survivor will cross the finishing line. With this thought, I push myself, going faster, I’m sure, than I ever have before, but the young man matches my speed. I think of M.’s words—
Ian fucked Franny. Ask him where he was the day she died
—and my anger returns, propelling me forward. On the fifteenth lap I am determined to gain distance on him, but on the sixteenth I realize I am alone in this lane. The young man is no longer here. I stop a moment, and through the blur of my goggles I see him walking toward the building, then inside the door. I continue with my laps, feeling cheated of a win. Swimming slower now, I concentrate on my form. Each stroke I take is strong and sure and even. I’ve found a steady pace, and by the twentieth lap my anger mutates into a black, nagging doubt. What if M. is telling the truth?
When I get home, I see Ian’s wood carving on the countertop in the kitchen: the basswood egret, its wings spread, barely three inches tall, and with such intricate details etched in the wood, such precision, that you know it’s the work of a skilled craftsman. I stand there for minutes, thinking of the intricate patterns etched in Franny’s torso, also the work of an artist.
Ian. I have the key to his condo and consider driving to Sacramento to search it. I don’t know what I hope to find—photos of Franny, perhaps, or something that belonged to her, jewelry, clothing, a hair clip, anything that would indicate he knew her. But just then I hear the front door open and close. Ian calls out my name, and a second later he enters the kitchen, invading the room with his distinctive, headlong gait, shoulders slightly rounded, head bent in thought, still wearing his clothes from work—gray slacks, a wrinkled white shirt. His presence, the blond huskiness of him, looms. He looks up.
“Nora!” he says, his face brightening into a smile. The full lips part to reveal a set of perfectly formed teeth, straight and white. “I didn’t think you were home. Why didn’t you answer?” He’s carrying a pile of books in one hand, a briefcase in the other. He advances, sets everything on the table, then comes over to give me a kiss. His lips settle on mine, a brief moment of contact. I feel rigid inside, as if all the warmth I felt for this man had solidified into something brittle and hard, and I must force myself not to pull away from him.
He gives me a puzzled look. “What’s the matter?” he asks, and then I do pull away. I walk around the table, putting it between us.
“You knew Franny,” I accuse him. I watch closely. An expression I’m unable to discern crosses his face. Is it fear, sadness, guilt? I can’t tell. But he did know Franny; his expression reveals that. I wait for him to lie. Sighing, he places both hands on the back of a chair, tilts his head down, stares at nothing in particular, then finally looks me in the eye.
Quietly, he says, “I wanted to tell you. I wasn’t planning to keep it a secret. When she died, you were so upset—it didn’t seem the right time for a confession. And in the weeks afterward, you seemed so fragile, as if the slightest discomfort would bruise you. I couldn’t tell you then, not until you were stronger. Then the weeks turned into months, and the moment for telling you passed. I never meant to hide it from you. I was planning to tell you all along, but one day I woke up and realized it was too late. I don’t know how that happened. One week I was waiting for the proper moment; the next week the moment had elapsed. So I began to rationalize my deception: no one knew of Franny and me; it wouldn’t do any good to tell you; it would just make things worse. My encounter with Franny began to seem unreal, that maybe I never slept with her at all. Only 1 knew I did. And I was ashamed of the way I treated her. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
I’m still standing behind the table, unable to speak. Ian knew Franny. I heard his words, and I saw the expression on his face, but I still expected him to deny it. I was hoping for a denial. I don’t want to believe that M. was telling me the truth. But he was. He was.
“How did you find out?” he asks me.
I laugh, a low, bitter laugh. Ian knows M. only as Philip Ellis, and he still has no idea that I’m fucking him. “The diary,” I say. “It’s in her diary. She mentioned she met someone at one of the office parties I took her to. Only she didn’t say who. All she said was that he was a reporter at the Bee. I remember the first time I read her diary, wondering who at the office slept with her. The pudgy man who works part-time in Sports? One of the new guys in Metro? Maybe he was feeding her a line and wasn’t even a reporter at all; maybe he worked in Accounting or Subscriptions. I never would’ve suspected you. Not in a million years.” I shrug. Coldly, I add, “Lucky guess. Perhaps if I hadn’t trusted you so completely, I would’ve put it together sooner.”
Ian winces at my words, but he doesn’t avert his eyes. “It was only one time, Nora. I swear. I was drinking, and I know that’s no excuse, but it was a mistake. It happened only one time. Please believe me.”
I see the sorrow in his eyes, his eyes so painfully blue, and I want to believe him, but I’m not sure that I can. “Go on,” I say.
He looks down at his hands. He’s holding one hand in the other, like a nervous child. Dropping them to his sides, he says, “She called me five or six times after the party, after I slept with her. She was … persistent. I think she felt that if I went out with her, I’d grow to like her. I should have told her the truth right from the beginning—that I wasn’t romantically interested in her. But I didn’t. 1 knew how difficult it was for her to make those calls. I knew it was an act of desperation, and telling her the truth—that I just wasn’t interested—seemed too cruel. So I let her call, and when she did I’d make excuses why I couldn’t see her. It was uncomfortable for both of us, and finally I did give her the maybe-we-could-just-be-friends routine. She stopped calling immediately. I was relieved, of course, but also a touch remorseful. I’d handled the situation badly—from the moment we first met. And that was the last I heard of her, until I read of her death in the paper. Then I felt even worse. I knew I should’ve been kinder to her and I hadn’t. I guess I thought I could make up for it by helping you after she died. Trying to make amends, I suppose. I felt drawn to you. I wanted to be by your side, be of assistance in any way I could. Then”—he spreads his arms in a bewildered, hopeless gesture—“then I fell in love with you.”
I am silent for a while. Franny pursued Ian. She called him half a dozen times to get his attention. In the diary—from her humiliation, no doubt—she admitted to calling him only once. I can’t imagine what it would be like to chase after a man, to call him repeatedly when he clearly wasn’t interested. I hurt for her now. I feel her rejection and wish I had been there to console her. Bitterly, I say, “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You didn’t tell me you fucked Franny because the magical moment for revealing it had passed? And then you fell in love with me, and of course couldn’t tell me once that had happened.”
“I was ashamed, Nora. I wasn’t proud of the fact that I slept with her and couldn’t return her affections.”
The pain in Ian’s face quiets me. I want to believe everything he just told me, but I’m not sure anymore. Not about him, not about M.
“What were you doing on the day she was murdered?” I finally ask.
Cocking his head slightly, Ian says nothing at first, then his face seems to crumple inward when it dawns on him what I am thinking. “How can you ask me that?” he says, clearly offended. “You think I had something to do with her death?”
I shrug. When he sees I’m waiting for an answer, he says, “I saw her only one time, six months before she died. Why would I want to kill her? How can you even suggest it?”
How could I? It does sound ridiculous. He had no motivation, and it had been six months since he’d seen her. I rake my hand through my hair, trying to get a grip on reality. Suspecting Ian of murder is farfetched, bordering on insanity. M. is doing this, I think, planting seeds of doubt to increase my confusion.
Ian comes closer and says, “You know me, Nora. You know me. I couldn’t have killed her.”
I realize this is true. In my heart, I know Ian is not a killer. But the seeds are still there, and I have my doubts. Or maybe it’s confusion. I don’t know what to think anymore.
“You should’ve told me you knew Franny,” I say. “What am I supposed to think when you keep something like that from me?”
He picks up my hand and holds it in his. Quietly, he says, “You’re supposed to think that I’m human, that I made a mistake, not that I’m a killer.”
There doesn’t seem to be anything else to say. I wish I could put my arms around him, hold him close and let him know that I made an error of judgment, that 1 know he is incapable of murder. But my body doesn’t obey. I don’t move forward to embrace him. I don’t offer any words of assurance. My hand is limp in his, and I finally pull it away.
“Ian, I want to be alone tonight.”
He starts to protest, then changes his mind. “Call me when you want to see me again,” he says, resigned, and he kisses me lightly on the cheek, just presses his lips softly to my flesh, and leaves. I go to bed, wondering when I’ll see him again.
Ann Marie, my neighbor across the street, is in her front yard gardening again. She’s a tiny slip of a woman, wearing a floppy straw hat, a faded sundress, and garden gloves so big and cumbersome that they make her appear, by comparison, even tinier and more delicate. I walk over and we chat for a few minutes. It seems as if she’s always working in the yard, but I know this is an illusion. She’s a math teacher in Sacramento and is gone most of the day. The fact that I always catch her while she’s gardening is coincidental, and says more about my isolation than her diligence with yardwork. If I spent more time outside, I would see her in other capacities. As it is, I rarely have contact with any of my neighbors. I’ve been living here a year now, but I feel no connection to the neighborhood. Ann Marie and I attend the same Jazzercise class at the Davis Athletic Club, and that is how I know her.
She is on her hands and knees, poking at the earth with a trowel.
“What are you planting?” I ask.
“Shasta daisies,” she says, and she uproots a clump of flowers from the ground. “Actually, I’m not planting them. I’m dividing the crowded daisies so there’ll be more flowers next summer—giving them a little growing room.” Her tan legs stick out from under her dress. I watch as she thins out a row of daisies. When she’s through, she rests back on her heels and surveys the work. With the back of her arm, she wipes off a trickle of sweat inching down her forehead. She stands and begins a slow tour of the lawn, checking for what, I’m not sure. I follow.
“So what’s new?” I ask, and by this she knows I’m referring to our neighbors.
She turns on the sprinklers, and there is a low gurgling sound before the water sprouts up and begins its steady spray. “Well,” she says, and as she bends down to adjust one of the sprinkler heads, she tells me what is happening in the neighborhood. Most everything I know about my neighbors I’ve learned from her.
“Several houses down,” she says, “the people are tearing up their front yard and redoing it.”
I look down the street and see a big mound of dirt. It surprises me I hadn’t noticed it before. I envy my neighbors for their normal lives, and would like to add a little normalcy to mine. None of them worries about stalkers and killers, nervously watching their backs; none of them wonders what will happen when two weeks are up.
Just then my landlord, Victor Puzo, dressed in beige shorts and a polo shirt, pedals up to my house on his bicycle. He’s a rangy man in his early seventies, dark-skinned and softspoken, and he stops by occasionally to make sure the gardener is taking care of the yard. I leave Ann Marie to her sprinklers and go back across the street to say hello to Victor. It comes to my mind, in the middle of the street, that I’m talking to more of my neighbors today than I usually do in an entire month. I am beginning to think of myself as one of those eccentric old women who is talked about behind her back, the neighborhood character. I am the Phantom of the ’Hood. The Invisible Woman.
Victor is studying one of the trees in the front yard. His hands are on his hips and his head is tilted to one side, a thoughtful, pensive expression across his face.
“Hello, Victor,” I say, and he looks over and gives me a friendly smile.
“The city wrote me a letter,” he says. “They’re going to replace both trees in the front yard.”
“Why?” I ask, and he shades the sun from his eyes and shoots me a funny look.